Co-authored by Kathy Egea and Lucy Blakemore
If you were asked to describe the students coming into your next subject, what would you say? Are they mostly straight out of high school, or are they also coming from TAFE, transferring from other courses, or through an equity pathway? How old are they, more or less? Have they studied other subjects, and if so, how are they doing so far?
If you can answer questions like these with confidence and accuracy, that’s great. If you also know how your student cohort has changed over the last few years, even better. This kind of information gives you a great set of insights to inform any necessary changes to your subject, including how it is delivered, and where students might need additional support.
But if you can’t answer these questions, where do you go? If you’re new to subject coordination at UTS or you’ve never managed to find this kind of information without opening dozens of browser tabs and getting tangled up in tables, it may be time to get familiar with the Student 360 Subject Dashboard (or take a fresh look, if it’s been a while).
More facts, less folklore
The Subject Dashboard is a Power BI interactive dashboard that provides a snapshot of the student cohort for each subject you coordinate in the current session. It’s designed to give you a simple overview that you would otherwise navigate several systems to see, giving you quick insights about the diversity of your cohorts now, and over time.
The dashboard gives a de-identified snapshot of enrolment trends, entry pathways, demographics, language background, and subject data such as repeat rates and past performance. Data is refreshed daily from CASS (Curriculum & Student Systems), so you’re not making decisions, as UTS Learning Designer Shaun Bell describes, “off last year’s folklore”. Shaun explains why this matters:
In a design conversation, the dashboard lets you map likely pressure points in the learning journey – where the shape of the cohort (commencing vs continuing; domestic vs international; different admission pathways) suggests predictable moments of challenge – and prompts practical questions about teaching moves, scaffolds, examples, pacing, and support.
This “bird’s eye view” makes design conversations “less about vibes and more about warranted claims”. If there’s an unusual shift in grade distributions or a spike in failure rates, the Subject Dashboard may not tell you what to do, but it can point to why it might be happening.
Clearer data = better design
These concepts really come to life when you hear what other subject coordinators are doing in their practice – and importantly, how it has made a difference to student experience and outcomes.
Lam Nguyen (Lecturer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering) talks with Kathy Egea in the video below to share how he used data from the Subject Dashboard to inform changes to a subject that had a high failure rate. The dashboard information surfaced a need for increased support for certain student cohorts who were struggling to apply complex mathematical concepts; changes to learning activities, materials and support led to a reduction in failure rates from 24% to 11% between 2023 and 2025.
Using subject dashboards allowed me to identify the patterns of student performance and identify students who are at risk. By looking at the data, we can also measure the impact of changes and the effectiveness of the practice that we are adopting. […] The subject dashboard allows me to look at students with different backgrounds and I can provide tailored, targeted support to those students.
Sally Fitzpatrick (Senior Lecturer, A/DRch Centre for Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges) uses the dashboard to make decisions around subject design, and uses the degrees of students enrolled in her elective, along with pathway and citizenship, to decide on subject and subsequent curriculum design. She looks at the overall results and distribution of results to gauge the impact of her practice.
Get the picture: 3 screens to check
Dashboards can be overwhelming, but the Subject Dashboard has been designed to show you only what you need, with options to go deeper if you want to. Once you’ve selected your subject, year and session, there are only 3 key screens to explore:
- Summary screen: overview information including total number of students, % commencing/ continuing, repeating students, enrolment trend, and other background information like where students have come from (HSC, TAFE, continuing), domestic/ international, English speaking background, age and gender.
- Enrolment flow: enrolments and withdrawals; comparisons with previous years; options to explore where/ who enrolments and withdrawals are coming from, including links to degrees and majors.
- Past results: pass rates, pass rate for repeats, changes over time, and options to explore patterns from different cohorts and backgrounds.
Kathy shares an overview of the dashboard’s key screens in the video below:
Get into it, so you can get on with it!
Subject coordinators have automatic access to the subject dashboard via Power BI (NB – this is not in Canvas). There are 2 ways to get to your subject dashboard:
- If you are familiar with Power BI, go direct via https://app.powerbi.com. The subject dashboard link is found via Student360.
- Using the vpn (remote access: https://vpn.uts.edu.au/ ), the subject dashboard link is under Business Intelligence.
Once you’re in, bookmark it for easy reference! If you’re having any issues with access, submit a request via ServiceConnect for the Data Analytics and Insights Unit (DAIU), request subject dashboard access, and indicate the subject/s number and title.
For further support or to chat in more detail about what the Subject Dashboard can do for you, please contact Kathy.Egea@uts.edu.au.